- From: Koen Holtman <koen@win.tue.nl>
- Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 01:39:30 +0200 (MET DST)
- To: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com, koen@win.tue.nl
- Cc: Koen Holtman <koen@win.tue.nl>
In todays editorial group phone conference, we discussed again the rule on when to include a Vary header in a response. This rule is mentioned a number of times in the spec. It is first mentioned in Section 12.1: #HTTP/1.1 origin servers MUST include an appropriate Vary header field #(section 14.43) in any response based on server-driven negotiation. We decided to change the rule into #HTTP/1.1 origin servers MUST include an appropriate Vary header field #(section 14.43) in any cachable response based on server-driven #negotiation. ^^^^^^^^ because there is no need, from a correctness standpoint, to include a Vary header field in un-cachable responses. It may be nice for some user agents to see a Vary in un-cachable responses (see Section 15.7), but this does not warrant a MUST. This change mainly intends to ease the writing, or the porting to 1.1 servers, of CGI scripts that generate un-cachable (dynamic) responses. With the new text, the authors of such scripts won't have to spend time close-reading section 12 in order to figure out what to put in the Vary header. Koen.
Received on Thursday, 6 June 1996 16:41:52 UTC